Milk is a combination of fat, protein and water which does not stay mixed. To prevent the fat from rising to the surface in milk, it is homogenized by pumping the milk under high pressure through small tubes which breaks up the fat globules through turbulence and cavitation. Fat molecules are thus reduced in size and tend to disperse more evenly throughout the milk so that creaming on the top of milk doesn’t occur. This process also actives enzymes in the milk which breaks down fats and can produce rancid flavors but this is then prevented by inactivating the enzymes through pasteurization (heating the milk).

Our Bible translations are also intensely homogenized. This homogenization furthers the illusion that the Bible has one author — the Holy Spirit. This illusion is the result of all the highly varied texts of the Bible being translated by the same committee (or person, sometimes) working under a specific set of theological and translation guidelines. You get the sense that a lot of the texts are pretty similar. Homogenization also takes place prior to translation — in the editing and redaction of the texts over the last 2,000 years and in the selection of canon for the Bible.

The New Testament in particular, because of this process, seems pretty consistent. In fact it is anything but. This translation consistency and homogenization incorrectly leads many people to think that there is some obvious central voice running through all the Biblical texts.

It would be interesting to see an English translation that tried to preserve functions of the original languages without homogenization. Such a translation would end up with the Book of Revelation, the Bible’s last book, coming out as pidgin-English in some places, and as having long flouncy sentences with obscure words as in the pastoral epistles, and so on. It would make the obvious *theological* differences between the various authors stand out too.
___________Note: This post is largely word-for-word from a comment by my Bible scholar reader, Ian, in my previous post — Holy Spirit as Author. Thanx Ian !

51 responses to “The Homogenized Bible”

Revelation is an especially problematic book, partly because there is no literary form which closely resembles the apocalyptic text type in European culture (maybe some anime genres are superficially similar), and the grammar in it is terrible.

I commented once to a Professor of New Testament that Revelation should really be translated with similarly poor English grammar.

I like the idea of the poor English grammar Revelation. Why not, it makes perfect sense if you are trying to capture the true flavor of the original.

There is also a homogenization process that takes place in our own minds as we conflate different stories in the bible together. Also with the NT in particular, as there are four gospel accounts to conflate. We end up actually thinking the authors wrote something they didn’t, though some justify that by saying the holy spirit meant both things.

@sabio – would be an interesting experiment. You’d have to cope with both the two canonical sources and the various traditional accretions too. So we get our ‘three kings’ via quite a bizarre textual and logical saga, etc.

I haven’t read one myself. It would be fun to write one, but I’m not sure I’ve got time in the next couple of weeks.

Another under-estimated aspect of homogenized Bible translation is economical. Publishers need to make money. Bible translations are cash in the bank, so publishers don’t want to provide milk that is too rich for the average reader. I often wonder what a truly non-biased translation of the Bible would look like. Certainly there is nothing like it on the market today!

@Steve – I have a bit pet peeve on that when it comes to study bibles. They often contain notes and introductions to the books that are just plain wrong.

The excuse is economic. If the introductions in study bibles actually told the truth (about authorship, dating, etc) then they would be vocally denounced as ‘liberal’ and heretical by the more ignorant branches of evangelicalism and that would hit sales hard.

The Oxford Annotated Version is about the only study bible that I’ve seen that has the guts to discuss historical critical findings in their own terms. And that, as predicted, had that very backlash. Fortunately the OUP still has some integrity.

@John Barron
I am sure you have studied this stuff. I must be misunderstanding your question. Here are two sketches I did to illustrate the process of Bible editing and redaction which I wouldn’t think were up for debate.

I am very familiar with the issue which is exactly why I asked for evidence of redaction and editing — or tampering as you insinuate. This is very specific. What your pictographs show is reached conclusions in bubbles. I am asking for what specific pieces of evidence is being used to determine tampering, other than “probably”.

@ John Barron:
Looking at this NT Sources link you will see the Alexandrian, Byzantine and Western text types. We can see there how editing changed the original sources way back then. [Again, I am do not doubt that you have great familiarity with this.]
I would expect you to agree that variations in texts exist because of editing. But if you don’t, then we have a huge difference. Do you believe that Yahweh protected the Bible from editing and redacting in ways he didn’t do with other religious texts in other traditions?

Do you like the NT Sources diagram? Since writing it, I have had at least 4 people ask if they could use it in teaching their religion classes (both in Churches and Universities) — all 4 of those people were Christians. Any corrections or thoughts? — you can go over to that page to make suggestions if you have any.

Ill get back to you on your diagrams after Christmas. Quickly, they are good illustrations of the phases in history but don’t support the “editing and redaction” conclusion. With a bit more of explanation what the diagrams actually represent (even as is) they would be incredibly useful, and I would even point people to them, with some clarifications.

Z

There is no data to conclude from in this or the other post. It merely states there is editing and redacting. It is a conclusion without pointing to the edits and redactions. The funny thing is, if we are to accept the conclusion, that it has been edited and redacted, it supports my view. I will explain in a post of my own, again, after Christmas.

@ Pseudo-Teapot,,
This is an important point — thank you. As my diagram (Translation Pathways) illustrates, the “editing” bias you are mentioning happens before we get the “extant texts”. I am actually not very sure of the dates — do you have sources? Further text manipulations, as you allude, happen during the construction of “original texts” and then in the translations of those texts and their exegesis.

Bias is inevitable, for every ancient tradition — this is common sense.

OK, John, I will try to continue being patient with your pugilistic ‘dialogue’ style:
Just as biologists can explore mechanisms of biological evolution that occur before observation was possible, or linguists can propose mechanism of the spread of language without witnesses, so textual analysis can reveal much from times long before we had video recordings.

Or maybe I misunderstand your terse questions.
Answer the question: Do you think editing took place in the Biblical texts? You still haven’t clearly declared yourself to us.

Terse comments? Have you taken a look at how you “boil down” mine and other Christian’s comments? You’ve got some nerve on you.

Also, take this for what you will, but I have seen your inquizitive, thoughtful, exploratative discussion, both here and on my page, turn to snide condescending, haughtiness. I dont think you are at all interested at “getting to the bottom” of anything. It seems you adore your convictions and find pleasure in talking down to dissenters.

@ John,
Yes, it seems we don’t have chemistry. You are welcome to participate, but I can’t have you avoiding questions and avoiding replies because we really can’t make progress that way. I aim to either trying to clearly delineate where we disagree or to share information. Trying to come to agreement is not a goal of mine.

Yes, it does matter what I mean by “edit” or what you mean by “edit” — you can expound rather than just dropping it if you’d like.

As you know Sabio I am a Christian and I have found you to be polite and respectful of my comments and stated views. I do not know this John Barron fellow, but having read several of his comments over the past few days I must say it is embarrassing to me that some would see him as an accurate voice for the Christian faith. Unfortunately, one of the reasons his style has the power to be so embarrassing is because I know indeed it DOES represent a significant percentage of Christians accurately.

Are there edits in the bible? In my opinion there is absolutely no intellectual integrity in denying them. Some of them are minor…others completely game changing. Bart Erhman may not speak for me s a believer…but I have found his work to be honest, thorough, and extremely helpful in processing my faith. The fact that he and I have come to different ultimate conclusions (or you and I for that matter) in no way invalidates his research.

I’ve read forged as well as his others. Ehrman jumps to unwarranted conclusions. In fact there are two ehrmans. The one who writes to lay audiences who believes the texts are so corrupt they cannot be known. But to fellow new testament academics, he sounds almost like a conservative Christian, affirming that what we have is likely what was written. I do find that Ehrman makes compelling arguments to people who are not familiar with textual criticism, but to those in the know, realize he is an author to sell books.

@ Gary
Thanks for the note.
Yeah, the real message is that there are a whole variety of you Christians out there.
But heck, that should not be surprizing: there is a whole variety of atheists and buddhists out there, that is why I made the “Share Thyself” posts to facilitate dialogue.
I just did my “Who is a Christian” Post to further illustrate the issue about discussing things. We need shared terms and often that alone is difficult.

I like to analyzing things by both careful baby steps or by larger view analysis. But I think it is important to know both which we are doing and what our objectives are.

John and I have had poor encounters several times, I think he is sometimes not aware of his rhetoric style. But I think it is a two way thing. We BOTH have to work at this to improve. I probably push his buttons as much as he does mine.

Thanks for your compliments — I wager to say we have far more in common than not and that our differences are perhaps unsubstantial.

@ John Barron
We probably agree that it is very important to keep straight the issue of the existence of edits vs. suspicions of substantial changes in them message after textual criticism techniques tries to put together original texts. I hope to address this issue on coming posts.

I have heard criticisms of Ehrman like yours before from other conservatives. I have actually not examined them much and can’t say one way or another. When I have time, after a little more examination, I hope to write my opinions about this issue. My method will be to go in baby steps when possible as this seems like a fruitful method: defining terms, discussing sources and limitations and such.

(1) Meanwhile, have you read papers by Ehrman (not his best-seller stuff) which reveal him to be closer to a conservative Christian in his evaluation of texts? Or what that something you heard someone else say. I’d love a link to a paper or two which you have read to back your claim. I know that may be tough, but thought I’d ask.

Conservative Christian authors are not widely found in popular book stores. Only authors who are critical of Christianity sell books in the numbers Ehrman has seen.

Anyway, yes Sabio I have read (some) ehrmans academic works. I have friends who attend UNC chapel hill who were able to get hard copies. I’m not sure of they are available online without being part I’d that academic community, but who knows.

I can’t really think of a reason a scholar would give two opposite impressions to different audiences

I have read Ehrman and also would like to see something written by him that would back up your claim that he gives “opposite impressions to different audiences”. I do not believe this is the case. Of course he used to be a believer with very fundamental views…but I perceive you are alleging the his present writings are contradictory.

These type of allegations should be easy to prove…otherwise you are only still engaging in ad hominem.

John said…”Conservative Christian authors are not widely found in popular book stores. Only authors who are critical of Christianity sell books in the numbers Ehrman has seen.”

Hmm…Books with a religious bent on the Current Amazon best sellers list.

#17 – Through my Eye by Tim Tebow
#26 – Heaven is for Real: A Little Boy’s Astounding Story of His Trip to Heaven and Back by Todd Burpo
#49 – The 5 Love Languages: The Secret to Love That Lasts by Gary Chapman
#53 – Jesus Calling: Enjoying Peace in His Presence by Sarah Young
#67 – Another issue of Heaven is for Real.

And the first in the current 100 that is “critical of Christianity” is

#74 – God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything by Christopher Hitchens

Or we can look at Ehrman’s books and where they stand on Amazon’s best seller ranking compared to say James Dobson’s books.

I’m talking about Christian apologists, not milquetoast feel good all you need is love Christians. I mean serious defense of the christian faith. Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris, and Ehrman are prominently displayed. Try to find Craig, Blomberg, Wallace, Bruce, or metzger at your local Barnes and noble.

@ John Barron
(1) Well, were going to need you to tell us the name of an article or two of Ehrman’s that you have read that confirm your opinion. We can’t take your word for it. Google Scholar may help you find the title if you have time.

(2) I seen conservative author books in book stores and even grocery stores. But I am sure Christian book stores sell much more, of course.

(3) You didn’t answer my second question. Have you read Avalos? (I supplied a link)
Point being, more than one scholar has addressed this issue — Avalos being one — though he is an OT expert.

@ Gary
No, I haven’t read Collins. Any particular reason you are asking? I am sure lots of atheists have written reviews on his work. I kind of remember reading the reviews in passing.

No – You specifically provided a distinction between Ehrman’s work like Forged and his scholarly works to “fellow new testament academics”. I am only comparing apples to apples and you seem to want to back pedal and compare apples to oranges. Won’t fly.

I think it is hysterical that you now run an ad hominem attack on Dr. Dobson and refer to him as a “milquetoast feel good all you need is love Christian”. His views are nearly in perfect step with your own if your blog can be trusted to represent you.

@Sabio,
The reason I was interested in your take on The Language of God is because the author was the head of the human genome project (of all things) and an atheist. He is now a believer and makes a very compelling case for a rational and reasoned belief in God.

As for writing a blog, I must admit I have often considered doing so. My main hold up is a willingness to commit the time necessary to do it well. I tend to participate in blogs in spurts of activity, and I know that one of my own would likely suffer when I got too busy with a current class (I am an Adjunct at a local Christian University) or other time constraint. There are other constraints as well such as a need to keep some of my rather “heretical” views private. (I would literally lose my job at the university if they were known) Still…the idea holds much appeal and I may yet one day give it a try.

@ John
I am sure lots of excellent secular Bible scholars are hard to find too. It is tough to sell to the masses. And you are right: large volumes of sales often necessitate much oversimplification or selling-out or playing up to common false intuitions or many other faults. The question is if anyone has done this. Just because something is popular does not mean it is poor quality.

But there is a good reason there are special stores to sell Homeopathy texts, Mormon books and conservative Christian books. It is a specialized market. Heck, good urology texts can’t be found at Barnes and Nobel either.

Take home message: lamenting book store sales won’t get us anywhere in this discussion

Collin’s views about evolution and reasoning seem clearly mistaken and highly compartmentalized. My wager: his conversion served him in such a way that sacrificing reason was worth it.
See my post about my son: Sacrificing Rationality.

Its always rather amusing to read the same kind of rhetoric in another context. From what I can see those people who have an ideological objection to the overwhelming scholarly consensus are the same. Whether it is creationists, holocaust denialists, global warming denialists, mythicists, or inerrancists. They start from this position of overwhelming arrogance, insist that you prove things to their particular criteria, redefine commonly used terms in the most pedantic ways, deny any counter evidence as ideologically corrupt, claim that their side can’t get a fair hearing because of the academic conspiracy, and so on and so on. As far as I can see you could search and replace a few terms and John’s posts here would fit right into an argument that Jesus never existed, or that the holocaust is a Zionist invention.

Ultimately, if you think the scholarly consensus is wrong, then you need to do scholarly work. If you can’t or won’t, then everybody is justified in treating you like an embarrassing idiot. If you want to claim that scholarship has a big ideological conspiracy against your world view, then everybody is justified in treating you like a conspiracy theorist.

Until folks like John grow a measure of self-awareness for how outside consensus reality they are, its pretty futile trying to discuss consensus reality with them. Any more than it is feasible to discuss Napoleonic history with someone who believes themselves to be Napoleon.

I’ve gamely tried to defend a bunch of consensus academic viewpoints this year. That there was a historical Jesus, that evolution is the best explanation for biological forms, that the earth is older than a few thousand years, that the sun goes round the earth, and that there is no luminiferous ether. It has been very striking how all these conversations go the same way. How there are folks like John in every one; how they all claim the same things; and how they all furiously deny they are like all the others, and even how those denials use the same reasons in each case!

I considered writing a similar comment after the first comment John made above, his original comment was absolutely characteristic of the same rabbit hole of pseudo-debate. The resulting discussion pretty much panned out how I expected.

I don’t know how to have fruitful dialogue. I’m increasingly of the opinion that it isn’t possible. That at some point there is a fundamental disagreement about what constitutes reality.

I suspect all one can do is continue to recapitulate the findings of the experts and point folks at reliable resources.

The internet is a wonderful playground for folks with bad Dunning-Kruger issues, and anyone can claim black is white (and “most experts, when pressed agree that it is so, it’s just the vocal minority who claim otherwise”).

The message that needs to get out, loud and clear, is that professional scholars are experts for a reason. And that nobody else gets be taken seriously on why they’re wrong if they aren’t willing to submit their own fantasies to the same academic rigour. I suspect all we can do is educate folks of that: to inoculate them against the self-importance and shoddy reasoning of the John Barrons or Ken Hams of the world.

I will do what I can to locate a copy of the paper I read of Ehrman’s. But here is one example of what I’m talking about: Ehrman routinely paints a picture that reconstruction of the original text is virtually impossible. But he has said:

“Bruce Metzger is one of the great scholars of modern times…And even though we may disagree on important religious questions–he is a firmly committed Christian and I am not—we are in complete agreement on a number of very important historical textual questions. If he and I were put in a room and asked to hammer out a consensusstatement on what we think the original test of the New Testament probably looked like, there would be very few points of disagreement—maybe one or two dozen places out of many thousands.”

@ John Barron
(1) Please try to get in the habit of writing @ Somebody so as to direct your comments.
(2) Could you share the source of that quote: I have both Misquoting and Interrupted, if it is from there.

I have the paperback first edition and it must have an added section. Its part of an interview he gave. I had to hand type the quote. You’ll have to either take my word for it, or get a copy of the paper back.

I found a larger quote on similar issue. I think the details of this quote avoid the notions that your quote may have when pulled out of context:

“The position I argue for in Misquoting Jesus does not actually stand at odds with Prof. Metzger’s position that the essential Christian beliefs are not affected by textual variants in the manuscript tradition of the New Testament. What he means by that (I think) is that even if one or two passages that are used to argue for a belief have a different textual reading, there are still other passages that could be used to argue for the same belief. For the most part, I think that’s true.

“But I was looking at the question from a different angle. My question is not about traditional Christian beliefs, but about how to interpret passages of the Bible. And my point is that if you change what the words say, then you change what the passage means. Most textual variants (Prof. Metzger and I agree on this) have no bearing at all on what a passage means. But there are other textual variants (we agree on this as well) that are crucial to the meaning of a passage. And the theology of entire books of the New Testament are sometimes affected by the meaning of individual passages.

“From my point of view, the stakes are rather high: Does Luke’s Gospel teach a doctrine of atonement (that Christ’s death atones for sins)? Does John’s Gospel teach that Christ is the ‘unique God’ himself? Is the doctrine of the Trinity ever explicitly stated in the New Testament? These and other key theological issues are at stake, depending on which textual variants you think are original and which you think are creations of early scribes who were modifying the text.”
— Q & A with Bart Ehrman in Ehrman 2005; 252-253

But I am not interested in defending Ehrman, I am interested in the issue.

The quote I offered is the entire paragraph. That was my point. When speaking to fellow academics, he acknowledges the quality of the evidence. When he writes to a popular audience, all of a sudden everything is in question. That’s all.

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